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Press Release

ALEX KATZ: SUBJECT TO REVERSAL
June 19 – August 2, 2008

Richard Gray Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by iconic American modernist Alex Katz. Alex Katz: Subject to Reversal will run from June 19th – August 2nd. The gallery will host an opening reception for the artist on June 19th from 5-8 p.m.

In Subject to Reversal, Katz continues to push the boundaries of his signature style: richly colored, smooth portraiture. Many of the artist's most familiar sitters are present, including his wife Ada and son Vincent, but instead of their characteristically emotionless faces, Katz wryly gives us the backs of their heads. For the viewer, these portraits-in-reverse project both a heightened sense of remoteness and cool, and, at the same time, they bespeak the intimacy between artist and model. The viewer becomes the voyeur.

The exhibition includes 18 works that together reveal the totality of Katz's working method. These range from finely rendered charcoal drawings to intuitive, gestural oil-on-board sketches that capture color and light, to brilliant, super-life-sized canvasses.

Alex Katz (b. 1927) has been the subject of nearly 200 solo exhibitions internationally since 1954, including most recently at the Jewish Museum, New York with Alex Katz Paints Ada, an exhibition of almost 50 years of the artist's portraits of his wife. The Whitney Museum of American Art held a retrospective of Katz's work in 1986, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art held a similar exhibition focused on the artist's prints two years later. Works by Alex Katz are in public collections worldwide, including at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Gallery, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Featured Works

Ada, 2007 Oil on linen
Stephanie, 2007 Oil on linen
Vincent, 2007 Oil on linen
Peter, 2008 Oil on linen
Tracy, 2008 Oil on linen
Ada, 2007 Charcoal on paper
Oona, 2008 Charcoal on paper
Stephanie, 2007 Charcoal on paper
Tracy, 2008 Charcoal on paper
Peter, 2007 Charcoal on paper
Vincent, 2007 Charcoal on paper
Ada, 2007 Oil on board
Peter, 2008 Oil on board
Tracy, 2008 Oil on board
Oona, 2008 Oil on board
Stephanie, 2007 Oil on board
Vincent, 2007 Oil on board